22 May, 2016

This Week In Videogames – 22/05/2016

It’s all space in in this week’s news roundup, and not a
hint of Warhammer! It may be hard to believe I know, but don’t worry I’m sure
we’ll make up for it in the coming weeks.

Wolf Pelt Mats Confirmed

Leaked on Reddit and corroborated by sources speaking to
Kotaku, Destiny’s next expansion, slated for a September release may be called
Rise of Iron. It will supposedly feature a new raid and be larger the first two
DLC packs, perhaps more akin to The Taken King. The leaked poster, below,
features Lord Saladin, of the Iron Banner event, brandishing a hammer larger
than any currently in the game. Also wolves, wolves with hot pelts...

According to Kotaku the raid may feature “Fallen with a
twist”. Perhaps more important to the continuation of Destiny, the report also
claims that Destiny 2 – slated for 2017 – has been rebooted and is under the
direction of Luke Smith. Luke Smith was the sarcastic and easily misinterpreted
director of The Taken King expansion – the release that pulled Destiny in a largely
favourable direction last September. According to Smith’s Twitter account, he
is the director on a unannounced project, and I believe that technically all we
know about Destiny 2 has come from leaks, mostly from Kotaku.

Kandosii!

Coming June 1st/3rd, Star Wars: The
Old Republic Knights of the Fallen Empire Chapter XIV Mandalore’s Revenge will feature,
well, Mandalorians. Interestingly the old Imperial lapdog that masqueraded as
‘Mandalor’ seems to have been replaced by a familiar and far more badass
warrior. Be warned, the trailer naturally contains spoilers for the upcoming
chapter.

My DualShock Tingles

Halo 5’s Forge mode will be coming to Windows 10 for free
343 Industries announced, with keyboard/mouse controls and increased
resolutions. This isn’t the whole game, just Forge, Windows 10 players will be
able to build and test Forge maps and publish them to the Xbox One.

‘Forge on the PC will finally give the mouse/keyboard
editing precision the community has always been clamoring for. On top of that,
an updated and optimized UI geared towards mouse interactions makes a lot of
the inputs in Forge easier/faster than before.’

It’ll release sometime later this year, in addition to,
“…new environments, advanced file sharing capabilities, new pieces, palettes,
props, and much more.” Does this mean we’ll finally be able to play Halo 5 with
a good controller?

Also here's the Memories of Reach trailer. Memories of Reach is the latest Halo 5: Guardians update, it has added the Infection gamemode, Halo: Reach themed REQs, and more.

No Frontiers Are Final

Paradox outlined their current, somewhat fluid plans for the
future of Stellaris on their forums this week:

“…we will release a lot of expansions over the coming years.
Each expansion will be accompanied by a major update (for Stellaris, these
free updates will be named after famous science fiction authors) containing a
whole bunch of completely free upgrades and improvements to the game in
addition to regular bug fixes. As long as enough players keep buying paid
content for the game, we promise to keep improving the game for everyone,
almost like an MMO.”

Stellaris will be just like Europa Universalis and Crusader
Kings 2 in that regard. In the immediate Stellaris is set to receive a number
of updates, named after renown sci-fi writers, to improve the overall game and
bolster the midgame specifically. ‘Clarke’ is set for the end of May and will
focus on bug fixes, user interface, and AI improvements. ‘Asimov’ is intended
to improve diplomatic options, mechanics around the emancipation faction, and
diplomatic incidents – scripted events, like missions. And far off in the
future is ‘Heinlein’, which is planned to expand military options, fleet
mechanics, add new mid-game/colony events, and a “living solar systems”.

Find more specifics in the diary linked below, and feel free
to check out my Stellaris review, it’s one of my more critical, less ‘reviewy’
reviews to be sure.